Pages

Tuesday, 26 May 2009

Laser Sweat Ablation - LSA - Further Update

Our 3rd and 4th patients who have had Laser Sweat Ablation came to The Whiteley Clinic to be seen for their one week follow up today.

The third patient is a young lady who is actually 9 days post procedure today - (see photo).

The hair of her arm pits has fallen out as expected and she has not had any sweating from the armpits at all since the operation - although the official test will be performed at 6 weeks post procedure.

She has full range of movements of her arms without problems and the only adverse thing she has noticed so far is that the area has a few lumps under the skin - which is normal in the early stages after an operation.

The patient is back to a fully normal life - and has been for several days now. She will now not need to be seen again until her 6 week follow-up and sweat test.

The 4th patient is a young man who had very severe sweating. He had to come back today (third day after the operation) as I am away presenting research for the rest of the week.

He has had a bit more bruising - particularly of his left arm pit - the right one has very little bruising.

He took of his compression garment yesterday and some of the redness is left over from the compression.

He hasn't felt any sweating from either arm-pit and has good range of movements of both arms. He only needed some pain-killers the day after the surgery.

We are going to call him back to check him in a week or so but, as with all of our patients, he can call us at any time should a problem develop.

Interestingly, I have noticed another clinic in the South East offering "Laser Sweat Ablation". It is a GP run clinic and certainly the practitioner was not trained here.

As we introduced the procedure to the UK, and are still perfecting it, I would suggest anyone interested in having LSA - Laser Sweat Ablation - be very careful as to who is offering it and exactly what their training is - and what their results are.

2 comments:

Congratulations, you have done a better job, it is such ashame for me that you did such a poor job on me, scared my armpits so bad that I can not wear anything that shows them, The other doctor carrying out the procedure can not do any worse that what has happened to me surely.

As in the previous blogs below, and also your comments in them, new operations always take time to perfect.

You were the second UK case - the 3rd and 4th seem to have gone much better in the early days building on the modicfications that i have already posted in this blog.

Of course, it must be remembered that you are still in the early healing period. All scars take 6 weeks for initial healing, 3 months for good healing and then 6 months - 1 year for the cosmetic effect to improve.

Therefore although you are clearly still upset, we won't know if the operation truely went as badly as you think in the long term, until we have repeated the sweat test at 6 weeks and seen what the armpits look like at 3 months and 6 months.

As for your comments about another doctor not being able to do worse - well that that is clearly not true. There are all sorts of important structures in the armpit (including nerves, arteries and veins) that surgeons are used to dealing with, but some other doctors (including GP's doing aesthetics) have never encountered. As such, surgeons who are used to the position of these structures are far less likely to injure them.

Also, as you have pointed out yourself, you didn't have an optimal result. As I introduced this procedure and am trying my hardest to perfoect it, i would have thought you would have agreed that it would be sensible for anyone taking it up to come for training to learn the pitfalls - rather than just starting it themselves and potentially putting people through the same that you have been through?